


two paths

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [205]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Character Study, Difficult Decisions, Flashbacks, Gen, Interlude, Mithrim, Thangorodrim, the last interlude really I promise I'll get back to the main event now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23314735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: (But Fingon—)
Relationships: Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Gwindor & Gelmir, Gwindor & Maedhros | Maitimo
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [205]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	two paths

As evening falls, the innards of Mithrim move as they have for the past two days: stealthily, cautiously. Celegorm has no appetite, but forces meat into his stomach anyway. There is never a certainty that food will be plentiful in a week, or a month.

Then, too, war could come at any moment from the other side of the lake. He must be ready for _that_ , without ever considering whether it would be a just war.

From the corners of his eyes, under wide-flung lamplight, he watches his brothers. Amras is sour-faced but eating steadily.

Celegorm has not spoken to him since the bridge. The conversation spins endlessly, as if it never ended, in his mind.

Yet, his other brothers do not press him. This does not mean that Amras did not tell them, too; what it means is that no questions shall be asked, no plans proposed. There is a mercy in their cowardly madness; not that Celegorm desires mercy.

They failed months ago. That was the end of their world.

(But Fingon—)

When the meal is finished and the sentries stationed for the first watch, Celegorm sets off for the lower field, for his father’s grave. Feanor’s body, or what rots of it, holds no power over him. Huan sniffs about the winter-hardened earth and then rocks back on his haunches to scratch behind his ear with one heavy rear paw.

The sky has no light left in it. It is slate-grey, four-cornered, absolute.

The air is edged with the scent of snow.

He sobs like a baby. It’s no help to him or anyone, unless it draws hunting creatures near, offering them an easy quarry. Gwindor isn’t from these parts. He scarcely remembers, now, from whence he hales. Yet he knows that there are lions, and maybe wolves, in the high old mountains.

The land that meets the forest is uneven, uneasy turf. The forest takes rock and soil in the grasping roots of its trees, grinds it up, and layers it under red-tipped bracken.

Gwindor is visible from both forest and downhill field. If the lions, the wolves, or Mairon wishes, they can take him.

Hours pass like this. Ages pass, like this.

He tries to think of his death, deserved after what he’d done to the fresh-faced doctor-boy with the dark blue trusting eyes; the swinging, gold-trimmed braids. Mairon will come with blood on his hands and slit Gwindor ear to ear. He couldn’t go any farther, for fear of Mairon, but when the time comes, he won’t fight.

(But Fingon—)

It wasn’t for fear of Mairon.

His heart pounds, and he thinks of Gelmir. Not Gelmir as he died, unmade and bloodied. He sees shapes of Gelmir in the old house, knee-high, and then in the old shanties, half-grown, whistling through the gap in his teeth and ruffling up his white-sandy hair with his hands when he was thinking.

He was a strange bird, at eleven or fifteen or seventeen, to be _thinking_ so much. Gwindor was trying to be father and mother and brother to him all at once, and maybe he never puzzled him out because of that.

Remembering Gelmir, whole and happy (if also restless, if also sometimes _afraid_ in his innocence), makes him remember the other lad.

Into a shadowy, shamed, and pained existence stepped Russandol, at first looking not like a boy at all. Men could make animals out of other men, and the worst men in the world had tried with the red-haired Irish sprite. But they hadn’t succeeded.

Not until now.

Maybe Fingon will find a body, Celegorm hazards ruthlessly, his shoulders locked against the dusk as if the night chains him, his feet locked into the ground as if they, too, are buried there. Maybe Fingon will find grey flesh slipping off bones, russet hair bleached to straw-like cobwebs. Maybe Fingon will suffer, like that.

The ugly sob of a winter bird rises up. Celegorm does not, for once, name it. He has always heard notes and voices, words and wonders in birdcalls. Now he hears nothing but the shapelessness of their language.

He cannot weep, because the end of the world is past and he survived it.

Fingon is gone; he went to save Maedhros.

Maedhros is dead because Celegorm was too late to save him. There is no other way to shape that story.

Gwindor tries to think of Gelmir again. His hands scrabble at the cold, damp flakes of earth. He has provisions, but for what? He is miles from Mithrim, but for what?

Gelmir will not remain with him, even to haunt him. His blood is cold, far away. It is Russandol who fills the spaces carved into the depths of woodland night.

And it is not Russandol as Gwindor knew him, with his ragged hair and curse-stitched flesh.

There must have been a time—

 _Maglor._ Maglor the pale, with girlish features and wild dark hair and death in his eyes. Celegorm, staunch and strong and somehow, very like. And the other names, that Gwindor doesn’t remember even though he should.

One was redheaded. The smallest one.

Russandol was always so gentle with the children, as if he was protecting something old as well as something young.

Gwindor blinks and blinks, the tears spent on his cheeks. He imagines the boy running, smooth-haired, laughing.

He doesn’t think—no, he never did—

He never heard Russandol _really_ laugh.

(But Fingon—)

Maglor nagged, and so he must have nagged Maedhros about that year, long gone, that marked memory as the grimmest period of their lives for a while. Celegorm tasted plenty of bitter anger, in the recent, gunshot summers, but as a child, he was only afraid.

Afraid—yet unharmed. Which left the question: what had happened to Maedhros? When had the wound opened in him that let his dogged vices enter in? Celegorm doesn’t care for virtue, and hasn’t for some time. But nor will he be beholden to what devours.

He eats what is laid before him. He does not drink too much. He leaves the rawboned women of Mithrim untouched.

He stares down Feanor’s grave.

When Maedhros rode away, he was still brave and whole. The brother whose hands swelled and bled in another winter had smiled when he told Celegorm that that was how strength was born.

(They were thirteen and nine years old.)

Gwindor lifts himself on his aching legs, and cleans the mud and bracken from his cold hands. Gwindor keeps on, and keeps on, as the ground rises. Through the trees: the moon, fading.

Hours earlier, as the moon rises, Celegorm returns to the fort.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so, we're all in quarantine. You have been such faithful and friendly fans! Please come talk to us at allthatglittersisnotgoldrush . tumblr . com
> 
> Or you can find me at thelonelybrilliance!


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